u/Angstromium

MANY USERS MAKE THIS MISTAKE:

In Preferences , in the Latency section

Many many people think that they are meant to manually take the reported "total hardware latency" and type it into that box to make latency = 0ms.
Like : Input Latency = 5ms, Output Latency = 10ms, total Latency = 15ms

People will then (wrongly) type -15 into the driver error compensator thinking they are fixing their latency. Quite the opposite, they are making it worse.

In fact Ableton compensates for the reported total automatically and you don’t need to type anything else there (If you have a modern device).

But, if you mistakenly type a number into the error compensation field you are effectively telling the application "OK, you are already compensating my latency by -15ms, but I say that is an error, so please deduct a further -15ms from your calculation"

effectively throwing all your sync off by -15 ms !!!

So what is "Driver Error Compensation" actually for then?

Its in case you have a terrible old audio interface which mis-reports its latency.

So if you have a 2008 era Fartmaster Super Pro, and its reporting Input Latency = 0ms, Output Latency = 0ms, total Latency = 0ms!

In that specific instance you have a "Driver Error" and its not reporting latency correctly. So in that situation Ableton can't do as it usually automatically would and compensate for the hardware latency. In that case you would have to either throw the Fartmaster Pro in the bin, or ... Ableton kindly added this box. A box which nobody I talk to actually uses correctly !!

So - only if you are using a bit of wonky old hardware with error prone drivers - that is what the "Driver Error Compensation" box is for. But for 99.99% of users that box should say 0ms

Official info on this here:

https://help.ableton.com/hc/en-us/articles/115000234830-Driver-Error-Compensation-FAQ

Whenever I discover a song "organically " (via some app) and I take a quick voyage through the artists catalog- if the initial song I discovered is similar in style to the rest of their catalog I'll follow them and find out a bit more. However if the rest of their catalog is different in style from the song I initially liked then I won't follow them.

Example: I discover a minimalist woman singing over piano, very ambient, tranquil, melancholic - and I check the top tracks of the artist and the rest are upbeat nu-soul = no follow.

I discussed this with friends , and we all do the same thing. We check out their other songs and if they have a certain consistent style then we follow them. If the other songs are too different we won't. Now obviously there are cases where I check out their other songs and am surprised to discover they also have 3 other genres that I also like. But TBH that's more rare. It works for bigger acts, legacy artists, and musical geniuses - but most people aren't that.

I treat artists names like "channels". I use their project/ band name as a mental bookmark for that vibe.

So,

QUESTION 1

with that in mind - is it more sensible to group song output by genre and give that "project" a name as a touchstone for that output type? For example: all tranquil vocal work gets one project name. Meanwhile all Upbeat dance stuff gets another project name. ETC.

QUESTION 2.

If an artist already had a bunch of self released stuff which was divergent in character, with low listener base, would it be more sensible to take a few outliers down and put them back up under a project name so as to help the streamer / listener genre classification?

Some Advice : Are you using Driver Error Compensation incorrectly ?